


Bright Side

by relic_amaranth



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bad Jokes, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 18:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12989910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relic_amaranth/pseuds/relic_amaranth
Summary: Gabriel is feeling a bit down. Reader tries to help.





	Bright Side

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr and I forgot to post it here, but I like it so– have a fluffy Gabriel & Reader thing. Also to note, I’m categorizing this as Gabriel & Reader friendship but I tried to make it kind of ambiguous, so it could be a romantic relationship if you want? There's some flirting but it's mostly joke-y. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Something is wrong with Gabriel.

Not constantly snacking is strange but excusable. Since the great Soda Disaster of four months ago, Sam has been insistent in nagging Gabe not to eat or drink in the library anymore. Of course the nagging only works about eighty percent of the time (Sam is impressive in this regard; you would have put money on the average being much, much lower), but he’s not _addicted_ to anything. Gabe showing up without a candy bar or lollipop isn’t a cue to sound the alarm for the next apocalypse. However, three weeks without smugly eating a cake while Sam glares at him the entire time?

That’s another thing– Gabe’s around a _lot_ lately. He did promise to help look through some of the books written in nigh-illegible foreign languages and he had seemed genuinely interested in some of them. But now when he comes around there’s no joking, no laughing, no gumming up the works with whatever joke he has in mind. No jokes at all, really; it’s all serious and business and Sam seems perfectly content and _that_ sets a buzzer off if nothing does.

The last straw came yesterday. You had bought a pie and hid it until Gabe had showed up. After a little while of quiet, boring research (well, for Sam and Gabe, as you and Dean have your own computers and what Sam doesn’t know can’t hurt you) you excused yourself, went to get the pie and ice cream, and came back with it to offer it as a break. Sam gave you a very predictable stink-eye that you had utterly ignored and Dean slammed his laptop shut in anticipation. Gabe hadn’t moved. When you offered him some Dean had whimpere– er, made a manly noise of discontent, but Gabe had just looked at the dessert, said, “No thanks,” and gone back to whatever he was reading.

Dean, Sam, and you had stared at him for a long time. Dean’s bite had even fallen off his fork and he whipped his head at you. Dean and Gabe got along surprisingly well after some initial unease and they seemed to love almost nothing as much as giving each other crap. Denying something sweet and good and also giving up the chance to annoy Dean?

Something is wrong with Gabriel.

And you’re going to find out what. You’ve waited a couple of days for the opportunity and now that you see Cas walking down the hall, alone, you take a chance. “I need to talk to you,” you tell the befuddled angel before you pull him by the sleeve into an unused room and shut the door.

He says your name with measured confusion and you have to smile a little. “It’s nothing that bad it’s just…is anything super bad going on in Heaven?”

Cas blinks. “No.”

“Any big problems cropping up on earth that we should know about?”

“No,” Cas says firmly and squints at you. “Why?”

“Then what’s up with Gabriel?”

“Ah.” He loses the suspicious stare and looks more tired than anything. “You’ve noticed it as well.”

“Has he said anything to you?” They’re not _super_ close but they get each other more than any of the other angels can, and they spend quite a bit of time together as a result. If anybody but you knows, it’ll be Cas.

“No, but I have asked. You can guess what the answer was.”

Yeesh. “Well I hope it’s nicer that what I imagine it was,” you say. Gabe deals with feelings by avoiding the topic or getting prickly about it. ‘Prickly’ for an archangel carries a lot more weight than for humans. This brings up a problem though– is there an _actual_ problem or is it just the part of Gabe that is very much like a human, worrying, or just caught in a bad state of mind?

Cas’s eyes crinkle with concern. “Are you going to try to talk to him about it?”

“Maybe he doesn’t have to talk about it,” you say.

“What does that–” Cas tilts his head to one side. “What are you planning?”

You pat his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

Conversely, he looks as worried as he can. “I find those words as reassuring from you as I would find them from Gabriel. So to say, not at all.”

You smile brightly in return.

 

_~Several days later~_

“Seriously, what are you going to do with all that candy?”

“It’s my candy, I bought it, I can gorge on it if I want. _Now leave me alone_.”

Dean huffs and turns back to face the dark road, muttering, “Touchy, touchy,” like he hasn’t been hassling you on and off for hours since the last pit stop you made at a gas station. You roll your eyes over to Sam, who shrugs and puts his hands up like he doesn’t want to get anywhere near this…argument? Annoyance? Whatever. Coward.

Later that night you’re in your own room, absently trying to do research on the case when the sound of wings rushes by your ear. You stiffen instinctively but you glance back at Gabe with a smile. He’s leaning against the headboard and he looks at you, waggling his eyebrows, but there’s no smile, no humor to it. He looks tired.

“I got some snacks,” you say and take a few packages from the side table, tossing them at him. “Have at.”

Gabe frowns at the first candy bar and he raises an eyebrow at you. “I thought you didn’t like these?”

“They’re fine, just not my favorite.” You shrug and try to keep reading while also keeping tabs on Gabe.

He looks through the candy, looks at you, and sets it aside. Well, he didn’t give it back to you. You’re going to call that a win.

 

_~A week later~_

It’s an interminable day in the library. Sam had caught you giving hearts to cat pictures and confiscated your laptop. Dean had smirked at you, somehow fooling Proctor Winchester when he had walked behind him. So here you are, with a book written in faded pencil and strict instructions to glean what you can from it. It is the dictionary definition of boring. It is so boring that you can’t even tell if it’s useful or not; your eyes keep diving to the side.

When you glance at Gabe he’s zoning out. You smirk and decide Sam’s Wrath is worth this next bit.

“Hey Gabe?” you say and wait for his attention to be on you. “Did you know that circling vultures are a dead giveaway?”

It’s a weak attempt at a joke, but Gabe blinks and he looks a little less dead to the world. Dean mutters something under his breath but you ignore him, focusing on the angel. “Hey, did I ever tell you about that time I had a hunt lead me to a henhouse? It was full of poultry-geists.”

Sam’s bitchface is so epic you can feel it. Dean chokes on “seriously?!” and Gabe’s face hints at a smile. A _smile_. Well, an almost-smile. That’s all you need.

“You know why Rowena doesn’t like to go to the desert? Because then she’d be a sand-witch.”

The smile grows and Dean groans. Sam grits out your name.

“Did you know a banshee’s favorite dessert is ice _scream_?”

“(y/n).” Sam sounds desperate.

“I found out recently that monsters really love this one play about a tragic romance. It’s called ‘Romeo and Ghoul-iet.’”

Dean slams his laptop shut. “I’m out,” he says and stalks towards the kitchen.

“Do you know why ghosts don't like parties? They have no body to dance with.”

Sam says your name more intensely. Gabe is trying valiantly to clamp down on his smile. He is failing.

“There was a picket line in hell recently. I heard it was a real demon-stration.”

Sam lets his head fall to the table, drawing out your name in a long, pained way that, combined with your truly awful/awesome jokes, makes you collapse in on yourself with laughter. When you gain enough control to look up, Gabe’s smile is big enough to show teeth.

Phase two: success.

 

_~A week later~_

Gabe is fiddling with the label on his beer bottle. He’s more alert these days, and he even joked with Dean earlier tonight. Right now, though, he seems to be back in his head, stuck in something that makes him frown.

So you sidle closer in the booth seat you share, stealing his attention and a half-cocked smirk. It’s better than nothing, and you smile back. “Can you put your arm around my waist? I wanna be able to tell my friends I’ve been touched by an angel.”

Gabe and Dean both snort. It’s a good thing Sam isn’t here– food and puns are now banned from the library with equal vehemence. “You gonna ask me if it hurt when I fell from heaven?” Gabe drawls sarcastically and takes a swig of his drink.

“No, but I do wanna know– are you Australian? Because you meet all of my koala-fications.”

“Hey, you can’t do that when you know the person!” Dean says, like you’ve offended his rules when it comes to terrible pick-up lines. But you figure you can do whatever you want. And you’re going to.

You take a drink of your own beer and steel yourself. This one requires total concentration so you exude it as much as you can. You pin Gabe with your most intense bedroom eyes, lean in, and say in as low and seductive a voice as you can manage, “…Are you a banana? Because I find you _a-peeling_.”

Gabe stares at you. And stares. And then his shoulders shake and when Dean bursts out into loud, loud laughter you have to follow. Gabe manages to keep his laughter in but it takes all his effort and you and Dean are close enough to drunk that your amusement eggs each other on and you don’t worry about it so much.

 

_~A week later~_

“Watch out for–”

Sam doesn’t get the warning out before you slip down the hill into blood and mud and shifter goo and _ugh_ you are _covered_ in bits and pieces of the latest hunt and all you can do is stare up at the brothers and angels and wonder why God has so thoroughly forsaken you.

Except, not, because you hear a sound you haven’t heard in what feels like forever. Gabe is _laughing_ at you. True, full, gut-busting laughter. The sound makes you happier than you should be, swimming in corpse bits. Normally his utter amusement at your misery would be annoying, but you’ll give him a pass. This one time. The ones not getting a pass though? Sam (smiling), Dean (laughing), and even _Castiel_ (smiling).

“You– did you hear that noise you made?!” Dean says through his laughter and Gabe and him actually double over and put their hands on each others’ backs. You roll your eyes and manage to stand.

“I’m sure it was incredibly dignified,” you say with a snobbish air.

“Where does ‘shrieking four year old’ fall on the scale of dignity?”

For that you pick up a clump of mud and whatever and hurl it at Dean. He yelps and jumps back. Gabe is too busy laughing at him to notice you picking up another handful and it hits his chest with a very satisfying ‘splat!’ He looks down at the mass clinging to him. “Ew.” He picks something out and studies it. “I think that’s a finger.” He blinks and smiles at you suddenly, mischief in his eyes.

“Oh no,” you say, moving carefully away. “Gabriel don’t you d–” You let out a ‘very dignified’ scream when he throws it at you and you barely dodge in time.

“Hey, guys? Screaming and playing with body parts is not exactly how I want to get arrested,” Sam says.

“Spoil sport,” Gabe says and raises his hand, ready to snap. “I got it.”

In the flick of his fingers you’re in a cozy-looking room set up similar to your motel room, clean and dry and uninjured, and Gabe is your only company. “Where are we?” you ask.

“Your room, with a few divine upgrades,” Gabe says.

“Sam and Dean?”

“With Cas, in their own room.”

“The, uh…‘crime scene’?”

“Like nothing was ever there,” he says and strides over to you. You and he have done this Q & A enough times that it’s almost routine by now. You sit down on the bed and Gabe sits next to you. He presents you with a cupcake and not eating since this morning makes the monstrous load of sugar look immensely appealing.

“Say, did you hear about the love affair between sugar and cream?” Gabe winks at you. “It was icing on the cake.”

You laugh and unwrap the side to take a bite. However Gabe puts a hand between it and your mouth, leans in and says, “Actually, you shouldn’t eat that. You’re sweet enough as it is.”

Luckily his joke is without intent and he moves back, amused, and allows you to bite into it. He looks at you like he can’t quite figure you out, but there’s a fondness there. “You’ve been trying to cheer me up.”

You work through your bite and think about what you want to say. You can’t chew long enough, though; the cupcake is so delectable it melts in your mouth and you end up having to speak without thinking long enough. “Sort of? I mean…”

You sigh, wipe your face, and set down your treat so you can give Gabriel all of your attention. “I know you’re more than candy and jokes,” you say. “But I also know those are some of the things you enjoy, and you enjoy them with abandon when you feel good. I…I didn’t really know how to say ‘you look bummed’ without maybe upsetting you, so I wanted to show you that I knew. That I could tell you were sad and I wished I could help. That’s all.”

He stares at you. His smile, when it comes, is small, but warm. “I don’t deserve you,” he says.

“Very few people do,” you say nonchalantly, but you’re sure your smile gives you away. “But I guess I can make an exception for someone that gets me a cupcake _that_ good.”

He laughs, genuinely, without malice or hurt or irony, and that’s a sound you feel you can get used to.


End file.
